Radio Defense (OKW)
Radio defense (more precisely: radio defense of the OKW ; former abbreviation: OKW / WFSt / WNV / FU III) was the name of a department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) in World War II . It served the counterintelligence with the help of radiomonitoring , radio direction finding and radio evaluation .
Insinuation
After radio defense was initially subordinated to the Foreign / Defense Office , i.e. the military secret service of the OKW, under Lieutenant Colonel (later Lieutenant General ) Franz Eccard von Bentivegni , under the direction of Corvette Captain Schmolinske, the radio defense was subordinated to the Department III “Counter-Espionage and Counter-Espionage” Detached from the defense in 1940 and subordinated to the OKW as an independent group OKW / WNV / Fu III "radio defense". The hierarchy was as follows:
- Wehrmacht High Command (OKW), Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel
-
Wehrmacht Command Staff (WFSt) , Colonel General Alfred Jodl
- Office of Communications (NVW), General of the intelligence forces Erich Fellgiebel
- Office group Wehrmacht communication links (AgWNV), Lieutenant General Fritz Thiele
- Group III (radio surveillance FU), Lieutenant Colonel Hans Kopp
- Office group Wehrmacht communication links (AgWNV), Lieutenant General Fritz Thiele
- Office of Communications (NVW), General of the intelligence forces Erich Fellgiebel
-
Wehrmacht Command Staff (WFSt) , Colonel General Alfred Jodl
history
When the radio defense group was founded in 1940, it was headed by Hans Kopp. Their most important task was counter-espionage with the help of radio surveillance , wiretapping and, if necessary, deciphering of encrypted radio messages .
In July 1941, an Abwehr radio listening station in Cranz (in what was then East Prussia ) managed to intercept suspicious radio transmissions. As it turned out after the information was deciphered and analyzed by the intelligence service , it belonged to a Soviet ( NKVD ) spy ring , which the Gestapo later grouped under the code name “ Red Orchestra ”.
In 1944, after the Allies landed in Normandy on D-Day , the radio defenses managed to intercept and decipher radio messages from the American military police . So you could see the car - transport of the Allies in the reconquered by you French territorial track part. These indicated the direction of attack and the supply situation.
Beyond that, however - in contrast to its British counterpart ( Y Service and Bletchley Park ) - the radio defense did not succeed in breaking into the encrypted radio communication of the war opponents. Although the Germans captured British TypeX - rotor cipher machines , for example after the Battle of Dunkirk , after analysis and comparison with their own Enigma machine , which they considered "unbreakable", they came to the conclusion that an attack on it was possible Machine key is pointless.
literature
- Nigel West: Historical Dictionary of Signals Intelligence. The Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Toronto and Plymouth, 2012, ISBN 978-0-8108-7187-8 .
Web links
- Rudolf Staritz : Defense radio - radio defense. Technology and procedures of espionage radio services. Unpublished book manuscript, editorial deadline in mid-1985, revised version 2018 ( PDF; 10.5 MB )
- Belt direction finder in the German Spy Museum
Individual evidence
- ^ Rudolf Staritz: Abwehrfunk - radio defense. Technology and procedures of espionage radio services. Unpublished book manuscript, editorial deadline in mid-1985, revised version 2018 ( PDF; 10.5 MB ), p. 12.
- ↑ TICOM DF-187A Organization of the Cryptologic Agency of the Armed Forces High Command , accessed: May 2, 2019
- ↑ ptx calls moscow 3rd continuation, counter strike of the German defense. Der Spiegel , June 10, 1968
- ^ Hans Coppi : The "Red Orchestra" in the field of tension between resistance and intelligence work. The Trepper Report from June 1943. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 3/1996 ( Online , PDF, 7 MB)
- ^ Nigel West: Historical Dictionary of Signals Intelligence. The Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Toronto and Plymouth, 2012, ISBN 978-0-8108-7187-8 , p. 100.